Governor's Pollution Prevention Award Recipient - Lucent Technologies

The Governor’s Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Pollution Prevention have been presented since 1986. Lucent Technologies was one of seven recipients to receive the Award in 1997. These awards recognize outstanding commitments to improve Ohio’s environment through pollution prevention. Evaluation criteria for the awards include: the reduction of waste at the source, recycling or recovery of materials, cost-effectiveness, ability of the program to serve as a model for others, and effectiveness in promoting pollution prevention as the preferred long-term approach.

What is Pollution Prevention?

Pollution prevention is the use of source reduction techniques to reduce risk to public health, safety, welfare and the environment and, as a second preference, the use of environmentally sound recycling to achieve these same goals. Pollution prevention avoids cross media transfer (of wastes and/or pollutants) and is multi-media in scope, addressing all waste and environmental releases to the air, water and land.

Lucent Technologies

The Lucent Technologies Columbus (Lucent) facility was opened in 1957 as Western Electric Company, a manufacturing facility of AT&T. After the 1984 breakup of the Bell System, Western Electric was renamed AT&T Network Systems. In 1995, AT&T split off its manufacturing division. The new company was renamed Lucent Technologies.

Lucent is a high technology manufacturer of networking products for the worldwide communications industry. The facility employs 5,150 people producing wireless communications and switching systems products for local and long distance telephone service providers. Operations include assembly of circuit packs, installation of circuit packs into frames and cabinets, product testing, packaging, and shipping. Processes include automated and hand assembly, and wave, reflow and hand soldering. The facility requires a boiler house, medical facilities, construction, maintenance and tool room services, and an employee Emergency Response Team.

Pollution Prevention Activities

The primary focus of the pollution prevention efforts was eliminating the waste stream at the source instead of treating it after it is generated. This included equipment modifications, procedural changes, raw materials substitution, using cross-function teams and employee awareness through education. These efforts have included large projects such as installing a decanter in the Cationic process to reroute wastewater back into the batch being processed instead of removing it as waste.

• Elimination of Perchloroethylene Emissions
  

  Perchloroethylene was used to clean circuit pack assemblies after wave soldering. Wave soldering involves applying flux to the circuit board. When heated, flux helps solder flow. A flux typically used may be approximately 65% isopropyl alcohol and 35% rosin. The flux left a tacky residue that was cleaned with perchloroethylene. The cleaning process used a large quantity of solvent continuously flowing over a cascade to clean the soldered circuit pack. The assembly came out wet and required hot air drying. A solvent distillation and carbon adsorbtion system was used to control emissions.

  In 1986, several flux suppliers began to market new low flow solids fluxes that did not require post solder cleaning. They did not use rosin and contained only 2 - 3% solids in isopropyl alcohol. Conventional flux equipment could not consistently apply the new flux. Bell Laboratories, in cooperation with Lucent, developed a flux applicator that was able to spray a fine controlled mist. The first applicator was installed in June 1988. This allowed Lucent to completely eliminate perchloroethylene.

• Reduction of Volatile Organic Compound Emissions
  

  In 1993 a team of process and environmental engineers met to continue to improve the process. Flux manufacturers were beginning to advertise low solids fluxes that were free of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Soldering process engineers at Lucent worked with engineers at Bell Laboratories and HI-GRADE Alloy Corporation to modify one of the new fluxes for use at Lucent. The new flux was 2 - 6% solids, 1 - 3% carboxylic acid and the rest was water.

  To address concerns over drying boards after the new water based flux was applied, Bell Laboratories Engineering Research Center, in conjunction with Lucent engineers, modified the air knife attachment on the wave soldering machines. Because wet boards cannot be soldered, the air knife allowed the use of water based flux without slowing the process. These changes had the additional benefit of eliminating some cleaning of the conveyor used in the process and allowing Lucent to switch from isopropyl alcohol to water for remaining cleaning.

Environmental Benefits

Lucent reported 243,000 pounds of perchloroethylene emissions to the air in 1987 and generated 68,700 pounds of perchloroethylene waste which was recycled off-site. The facility used approximately 35,000 gallons of solvent per year. Although emissions were controlled, losses were very high due to process drag out and other fugitive emissions. The AT&T Low Solids Fluxer eliminated this hazardous air pollutant and hazardous waste for the facility.

The introduction of VOC-free flux and water cleaning to the process resulted in a reduction of organic compound emissions from the facility’s wave soldering operation of over 70% (100% on the machines using this technology) and approximately 60% for the total facility organic compound emissions. Because of the stability of VOC free-flux, no liquid flux waste has been generated from the process.

These improvements reduced air pollutants more than 99.9% and eliminated liquid solvent waste from the soldering operation.

Economic Benefits

Lucent reduced costs by $210,000 per year since 1991 by:

• Eliminating perchloroethylene,
  
• Eliminating costs of electricity, steam, process water, labor and maintenance for solvent recovery system,
  
• Reduced flux use, and
  
• Eliminating the need for off-site recycling.
  

Other business benefits not financially assessed include:

• Clean up time savings of approximately 30%,
  
• Improved product quality and yields,
  
• Reductions in environmental permitting, reporting, data collection and record keeping, and
  
• The freeing of work space formerly devoted to cleaning and recovery equipment.
  

Additional savings include:

• Approximately $24,000 per year for alcohol and emission fees,
  
• Elimination of purchases of fire protection equipment because water base flux and cleaning system do not require them, and
  
• Improved operational flexibility due to the fact that machines using VOC-free flux do not require PTI or PTO procedures.
  
  

The improvements reduced emissions at Lucent’s Synthetic Minor operation below the threshold for Ohio Title V permit requirements.

All these benefits are magnified by the fact that Lucent doubled the number of soldering machines between 1990 and 1996.

Health and Safety Benefits

Perchloroethylene is listed as an animal carcinogen in the 1996 ACGIH Worldwide TLV’s and BEI’s. Elimination of this chemical in the manufacturing process removed a serious health hazard to employees. In addition, water based flux is not flammable, unlike the alcohol based flux, thus eliminating a potential fire hazard for employees and the facility.

Management Commitment

Lucent’s Environmental Health and Safety policy and goals express the company’s commitment to protect the environment. Lucent provides financial and resource support for an ongoing program of environmental improvement. There projects include:

• 1987 to 1995 - More than 99.999 percent reduction in TRI reportable chemicals (392,000 pounds in 1987 to 2.0 pounds in 1995),
• 1992 - Boiler modification to burn landfill methane gas as a facility heat source and elimination of chlorofluorocarbons,
• 1992 to 1996 - Installation of nitrogen blankets on wave and reflow soldering machines reducing oxidation and, therefore, solder waste,
• 1993 - Elimination of 1,1,1,-trichloroethane from operations,
• 1996 to 1997 - Development and implementation of an Environmental Management System per ISO 14001 Standards,
• Future plans - Investigation into lead free solders and additional hazardous and nonhazardous waste reduction projects.

Transferability

Wave soldering is widely used throughout the electronics business. AT&T Low Solids Fluxer is compatible with commercially available wave soldering machines and is marketed to outside companies. VOC-free Low Solids Flux is commercially available through HI GRADE Company. The air knife is available from Bell Laboratories Engineering Research Center.

For More Information

Lucent Technologies
Barbara Thompson, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff
6200 E Broad Street
Columbus, OH, 43213
(614) 860-3739

This is the 57th in a series of documents Ohio EPA has prepared on pollution prevention. For more information, call the Office of Pollution Prevention at (614) 644-3469.